Hidden beneath the surface and entangled in the roots of Earth's astonishing and diverse plant life, there exists a biological superhighway linking together the members of the plant kingdom in what researchers call the "wood wide web". This organic network operates much like our internet, allowing plants to communicate, bestow nutrition, or even harm one another.

The network is comprised of thin threads of fungus known as mycelium that grow outwards underground up to a few meters from its partnering plant, meaning that all of the plant life within a region is likely tapped into the network and connected to one another. The partnership of the roots of plants and the fungi is known as mycorrhiza and is beneficial for both parties involved; plants provide carbohydrates to the fungi and in exchange, the fungi aids in gathering water and providing nutrients such as phosphorus and nitrogen to its partnering plant.

This fungal network has been found to allow plants to aid one another in growth and flourishing. University of British Columbia graduate Suzanne Simard was the first to show that trees such as the Douglas fir and Paper birch were capable of transferring carbon to smaller trees that may not be receiving enough sunlight, allowing seedlings to grow in the shade of other trees. Simard believes that many of the world's seedlings would not be able to survive if it weren't for the lifeline this network provides.

From Kryon Live Channel,“You Don't Know How the Frog Jumps", January 2011 in Tuscon, AZ

It would seem intuitive to every single Human Being in the room that in order to accomplish what you do as Americans in Congress, you must have at least two parties. For that is the way it has always been - the red and the blue.

What if I told you that there will come a time when there will be no parties? You might then say, "Well, that's impossible, Kryon, because you're not Human and you don't know how funding works." You might say, "It has to be a party that creates the power to raise money for the ones who cannot, and then the funding is spread around and this is the way we work. If you didn't have parties, you'd have no funding. Nobody could advertise, and no one could get elected."

Oh, really?

Are you aware right now, that you have a president who was elected on the Internet? He figured it out. When everybody can talk to everyone, you have plenty of funding. A few dollars here, a few dollars there. You talk to millions at the same time, they talk to millions at the same time. It's a new paradigm of communication. The young people know all about it, and you can't stop it. Watch for more from this new paradigm.

It is worldwide communication, one person at a time. It doesn't matter how many laws you pass, and it doesn't matter what you decide about who is in charge of it, you can't stop it. It's out of the bag now, and the communities of the young are going to be communicating. This is how the politicians are going to be communicating to you, literally coming into your home in a holographic form perhaps, explaining their position one by one, without a party. Then you will elect them to your Congress without a party and they will sit in the chairs without a division and there will be no such thing as the "other side of the aisle."

And that, Human Being, is called unity and there is a paradigm that you cannot even imagine. And it's in the works. And then you'll have a Congress that works together and gets things done without the current duality.

In a true show of community spirit, an American island too far from the mainland came together as one to build their own internet service powered by radios in trees. Orcas Island off Washington State has been transformed by its people's inventiveness.

For several years the residents of one of the San Juan Islands had suffered very weak internet from provider CenturyLink, located on the mainland. Despite promises of higher speeds and renewed infrastructure, nothing materialized. Many couldn't log on to work from a distance, as outages lasted anywhere from one to 10 days, according to Ars Technica. Private ISPs were expensive, demanding around $388,500 for setting things up.

DBIUA - or Doe Bay Internet Users Association - was the way to go, a group founded by local resident Chris Sutton and friends. Sutton, who is a software developer, came up with an ingenious plan to equip trees and other objects with receivers to channel internet directly into people's homes. But the island also needed a microwave link to tie Doe Bay to the mainland.

"The part of Orcas Island we're on looks back toward the mainland," Sutton explains. "We can see these towers that are 10 miles away, and you realize, hey, can't we just get our own microwave link up here to us from down there, and then do this little hop from house to house to house via wireless stuff?"

So, the DBIUA paid StarTouch Broadband Services some $11,000 to position a microwave link atop an old 50-foot water tower overlooking the bay - the only option tall enough for a point-to-point wireless link with the mainland.

Next up was the issue of dispersing that signal to some 50 houses. Sutton then carried out the insurmountable task of planning receiver locations in trees and other locations. Everything needed to be within reach of the 10 relay points on Orcas Island, and not obscured too much by its many hills. Using Google Earth, Sutton mapped out the signal paths, before performing further tests on the ground. "For some people, like me, the signal comes to my tree, and then down into my house to service me," Sutton explained.

To really get the best out of the positioning, Sutton also fashioned drones with cameras, as well as radio receivers, mapping out the best locations for the relay points and related receivers. Each relay point depends on one radio to receive a signal, and another couple to send it back out in different directions. Those relay points are technically similar to the microwave device that sits on the top of the water tower. And, for the first time ever, people could afford not just to stay home for work, but to watch HD movies without interruption.

A number of agreements needed to be signed with the outside world, such as if a resident's house were sold, the next occupant would have to pay the remaining credit, plus monthly costs (an initial loan of $25,000 was included; and customers also pay $75 a month for the service, which is unlimited).

Sometimes, words just complicate things. What if our brains could communicate directly with each other, bypassing the need for language?

University of Washington researchers have successfully replicated a direct brain-to-brain connection between pairs of people as part of a scientific study following the team's initial demonstration a year ago. In the newly published study, which involved six people, researchers were able to transmit the signals from one person's brain over the Internet and use these signals to control the hand motions of another person within a split second of sending that signal.

At the time of the first experiment in August 2013, the UW team was the first to demonstrate two human brains communicating in this way. The researchers then tested their brain-to-brain interface in a more comprehensive study, published Nov. 5 in the journal PLOS ONE.

"The new study brings our brain-to-brain interfacing paradigm from an initial demonstration to something that is closer to a deliverable technology," said co-author Andrea Stocco, a research assistant professor of psychology and a researcher at UW's Institute for Learning & Brain Sciences. "Now we have replicated our methods and know that they can work reliably with walk-in participants."

Collaborator Rajesh Rao, a UW associate professor of computer science and engineering, is the lead author on this work.

Almost 600 years after Pope Nicholas V founded the Vatican Apostolic Library, the Holy See is now turning to 50 experts, five scanners and a Japanese IT firm to digitize millions of pages from its priceless manuscripts, opening them to the broader public for the first time. When the project is finished, one of the richest and most important collections of historical texts in the world will be available with a click of the mouse - and free.

The plan marks a revolution for an institution known as the Popes' Library, which houses more than 82,000 manuscripts, some dating back to the second century. Scholars must now submit a detailed request to gain access to the library, which sits within the Vatican walls. The most precious works of art, such as a 1,600-year old manuscript displaying Virgil's poems once studied by Raphael, have been mostly off-limits. "This restriction was wise to protect such valuable manuscripts from hordes of visitors," said Alberto Melloni, a church historian who has used the Vatican library several times. "If anybody could visit, it would be like putting a child with a paintbrush in front of the Mona Lisa."

By digitizing its archives, the Vatican library, established in 1451, joins the ranks of illustrious institutions such as the British Museum, Bibliothèque Nationale de France and the Cambridge University Library. The Vatican is offering "a service that we provide all mankind," said Msgr. Cesare Pasini, prefect of the library, at a recent presentation of the project.

For the past year, Vatican officials have worked closely with experts at Japanese IT firm NTT DATA Corp.9613.TO -2.39% to test special scanners designed to handle particularly delicate documents. With the test phase finished, about 50 Italian and Japanese operators will soon begin the process of digitizing the first batch of 3,000 manuscripts under the watchful eye of Vatican librarians. That process, which will take place entirely inside the library, is expected to take four years.

After each document is scanned, it will be formatted for long-term storage and then released onto the library's website. The first digital images are expected to be put online in the second half of this year. All of the manuscripts, including the most delicate ones, will eventually be scanned, and viewers will be able to examine them from a variety of angles.

Digitalizing the library will be a mammoth task, involving 43 quadrillion bytes. (A byte is a unit that is used to represent an alphanumeric character.) In the end, about 40 million pages will be available for all to see. The Vatican won't say how long the whole project will take.

Disaster recovery mechanisms will be put in place so that images of the manuscripts will be conserved should anything happen to the originals."If something horrible happens - and I pray to God it doesn't - at least all this won't be lost," said James R. Ginther, professor of medieval theology and director of the Center of Digital Humanities at St. Louis University in Missouri.

Published on 29 Jul 2012 by TheSpiritScience Over the next several weeks, we're going to open up the mailbag and answer frequently asked questions that I get in the Spirit Science inbox. Granted, there's a lot of questions, and I can't be expected to answer all of them. I do want to tackle the big ones though, so that is what I strive to do over the next few weeks. Stay tuned to Spirit Science in the next few weeks, there's a lot happening and we have lots to talk about!

If you want to ask us a question for the mailbag, post them on Tumblr! (see below)

Uploaded by TheSpiritScience on 20 Jan 2012 http://thespiritscience.net/spirit/thoughts/ You can have, do, or be, ANYTHING you want. This week, Patchman dives into the unknown by discussing a very simple topic; Thoughts, Emotions, and the power that they bestow upon you. Or rather, how you can empower yourself to live in the moment by controlling your thoughts and emotions, and guiding yourself the way that you want to be guided, rather than allowing modern society to tell you how to feel and what to think. Just as you create your own reality, we are also co-creating our realities together. We are a collective! As a community, a city, a country, and a species, we decide where we want to go and how we want to flow. It is up to us to decide what happens next in the epic tale that is the human race, but change has to start from an individual level.

The Paradigms They Are A-Shiftin’by Zen Gardner(Adaptation of Bob Dylan’s prescient song “The Times They Are A-Changin’”, written in 1963, nearly 50 years ago.) Come gather ’round people Get out of your car The cameras around you All know who you are You thought this would happen In some time afar But it’s happening right now before you…. As the waves you saw mounting Now flood where you are For the paradigms they are a-shiftin’. Religions, Freemasons, Illuminati and all They each work in concert To devise our fall Will you look around And take up the call This world they’ve contrived is a prison… So you’d better wake up Or get locked in their walls For the paradigms they are a-shiftin’.

Researching the internet for information has taught me so many things. First of all, explore. Remain open and take the time to follow your heart and the leads and little nudges you’re given. I know I’m preaching to much of the choir here, but these basic principles have such a wealth of wisdom to be gleaned. We also soon find out the deeper one gets in the labyrinth of rabbitholelandia, the lonelier it appears to become. It isn’t really in the cosmic sense, but we become estranged to our previous ways of thinking and quickly realize our very lives are about to be drastically changed when we truly adopt the new Truths that are becoming increasingly apparent.

Baby AND the Bathwater – Out They Go! And estranged we become. Thankfully. The first period of a genuine awakening is the most difficult for most since everything, as in everything, gets reset. There’s really nothing to hold on to from your past or previous conceptions of anything if you’ve had a bonafide wake up. Oh, there are ideas and some concepts that seem to endure from tidbits learned along the way, but it’s not the same. Everything takes on a new living, continually changing, wonderfully creative amorphous nature. Quantum physics has one of the best explanations if you want to try to rationalize the experience of awakening to consciousness. We’re living in a land of probabilities and nothing exists except in our minds when we aim our attention in some direction. Then it theoretically “exists”. But it’s just probabilities in a bunch of empty, yet energized space, coagulated by thought and intention within the perceiver. That clear enough? Ha!

Does the internet actually inhibit, not encourage democracy? In this new RSA Animate adapted from a talk given in 2009, Evgeny Morozov presents an alternative take on 'cyber-utopianism' - the seductive idea that the internet plays a largely emancipatory role in global politics.

Exposing some idealistic myths about freedom and technology (during Iran's 'twitter revolution' fewer than 20,000 Twitter users actually took part), Evgeny argues for some realism about the actual uses and abuses of the internet.